Visma-Lease A Bike management have said that their riders Wout van Aert and Matteo Jorgenson, who came down in the same crash on stage 2 of the Tour de France, are both largely unscathed by their fall and are ready to continue racing.
Jorgenson himself said after the stage that he was surprised that he did not hurt himself more badly, given the speed that both riders came down, with the worst damage some minor road rash. Van Aert himself had a scrape on his right side, but nothing more serious.
The American further proved there was no major damage by first working for team leader Jonas Vingegaard on the final climb of the day, the notoriously tough San Luca, and then finishing with the main group of favourites, 21 seconds down.
Celebrating his 25th birthday on July 1, Jorgenson is currently lying 14th overall behind yellow jersey Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates).
“They are ok,” sports director Grischa Niermann said about Van Aert and Jorgenson before the start of stage 3, a 230.9 kilometre trek between Piacenza and Turin, before adding jokingly, “Matteo gave himself a nice birthday present because he hit a pothole and went down.”
In a very flat stage that looks all but certain to end in a bunch sprint, Van Aert will “most likely try for it, but we’ll see during the stage. It will be a long, long day in the saddle.”
Van Aert himself confirmed that he would likely have a go in the bunch sprint, telling reporters before stage 3, “That is the intention. I hope I feel good on the bike. It has been a tough weekend and I always have a better chance because of the fatigue of the sprinters."
Asked after stage 2 about the crash, Jorgenson already said “I surprisingly feel quite ok, when I went down I was going super fast so I expected to be much more hurt. But I got up and somehow I just lost skin, basically.”
“It was a pretty stupid crash, I’ve seen it happen a million times with other riders, I had one hand on the bars and the other on a feed bag, I was getting a bottle and the two riders ahead of me just split around a huge hole.”
“ I hit the hole, my left hand slipped off the bars, the rest is history, it’s just something unfortunate that happened. It had never happened to me before but now it has.”
Jorgenson was able to see how his team leader Vingegaard arguably had the best day of all the GC favourites - not taking the yellow jersey like Tadej Pogačar, but showing he is able to go toe to toe with the Slovenian, at least on the shorter, steeper climbs.
It was really impressive, Jonas was superimpressive, I was really happy, I’m proud of him. It was one of the stages that suited that him the worst of the Tour, compared to Pogačar, and he defended himself so well. Today was a huge victory.”
Overall, Jorgenson said, the opening weekend of the 2024 Tour de France had shown a host of positive signs for Vingegaard, back racing after a long spell of recovery following his major crash in Itzulia Basque Country.
“[I’ve seen] Nothing but strength and confidence, and also the way he’s descending and handling himself in the bunch, it’s impressive to see.”
“I’ve seen other riders have crashes like he did, and it’s taken them years to come back to the same level of confidence. Jonas is already back, it seems, so I’m just proud of him.”
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